3 ms·

> and yet the post-2009 economic expansion is the longest ever, and this is in spite of all the anxieties over tariffs and trade wards and the fed raising rates

> and yet the post-2009 economic expansion is the longest ever, and this is in spite of all the anxieties over tariffs and trade wards and the fed raising rates. A crisis is not an economic fact that magically happens when some predetermined values for some set of indicators are reached. A crisis is a mix of two things: 1) a big financial/economic issue that affects an important sector of the economy, 2) widespread panic. There are already multiple candidates for 1), but what hasn't happened is 2). Why? That's anybody's guess. My guess is Trump. For people to panic, there needs to be sustained media coverage and focus. But now whatever Trump says is more important than anything else for the media. If you look at the media since Trump became president, the most important issues have been all stuff related to his government, and whenever the media has focused on anything for too long, he's come out with some other thing that the media shifts their attention to. So we've had lots of small panics, which by now have mostly desensitized the public. If someone like Trump can continuously interrupt the media, they effectively control it through disruption, and then the media cannot focus for long enough on anything for people to fully panic and cause a full blown crisis.

roenxi 7y ago
Actually 'crisis' just means 'decisive change is impending'. There doesn't have to be panic. Coordinated or systemic movement of money in any form can be a crisis. There doesn't have to be reporting or emotion for the situation to spiral out of control. That is to say, the panic can follow the crisis.
- ta1234567890 7y ago
  > That is to say, the panic can follow the crisis. You are technically correct. Maybe I should have used the word recession instead. What I mean is that a lot (most?) of the damage in a crisis is actuallly done by big masses of people reacting to it rather than the crisis itself. Think about bank runs, widespread stock shorting and selling, people not investing because of uncertainty, lenders abruptly calling their loans, etc.
dev_dull 7y ago
> If someone like Trump can continuously interrupt the media, they effectively control it through disruption, and then the media cannot focus for long enough on anything for people to fully panic and cause a full blown crisis. Coming out of two straight years of one collusion “bombshell” report after another I agree with you. I avoided the markets when I was unsure if what was being said was true (it definitely seemed true to me). Now it seemed to be largely politically motivated and I’m totally “insensitive” to the MSM reports on Trump and I’m ready to make long term investments in the country again. Too bad I stayed out of the markets for the last year because those looked to be good times.

roenxi 7y ago

Actually 'crisis' just means 'decisive change is impending'. There doesn't have to be panic. Coordinated or systemic movement of money in any form can be a crisis. There doesn't have to be reporting or emotion for the situation to spiral out of control. That is to say, the panic can follow the crisis.

ta1234567890 7y ago
> That is to say, the panic can follow the crisis. You are technically correct. Maybe I should have used the word recession instead. What I mean is that a lot (most?) of the damage in a crisis is actuallly done by big masses of people reacting to it rather than the crisis itself. Think about bank runs, widespread stock shorting and selling, people not investing because of uncertainty, lenders abruptly calling their loans, etc.

dev_dull 7y ago

> If someone like Trump can continuously interrupt the media, they effectively control it through disruption, and then the media cannot focus for long enough on anything for people to fully panic and cause a full blown crisis. Coming out of two straight years of one collusion “bombshell” report after another I agree with you. I avoided the markets when I was unsure if what was being said was true (it definitely seemed true to me). Now it seemed to be largely politically motivated and I’m totally “insensitive” to the MSM reports on Trump and I’m ready to make long term investments in the country again. Too bad I stayed out of the markets for the last year because those looked to be good times.